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Apr
09

You Have an Opinion?

By | Development, Focus, Marketing

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When I write software, I ask for people’s opinions.  Then, I either listen to what they have to say or I don’t.

Some people are very adamant about certain features, options, or use cases. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore them entirely.

It’s nothing personal. I have opinions about certain applications that should be ignored as well.  Features, options, and experiences that are important to me aren’t important to the overall process or the product’s actual end user.

Am you entitled to have an opinion of my work?  Yes.  But I’m just as entitled to disqualify it for the following two reasons:

  1. Lack of Standing
  2. No Credibility

Want to know why I disqualify opinions in these two categories?  Then read the latest post on Seth Godin’s blog:

Is everyone entitled to their opinion?

Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we need to pay the slightest bit of attention.

There are two things that disqualify someone from being listened to:

1. Lack of Standing. If you are not a customer, a stakeholder or someone with significant leverage in spreading the word, we will ignore you. And we should.

When you walk up to an artist and tell her you don’t like her painting style, you should probably be ignored. If you’ve never purchased expensive original art, don’t own a gallery and don’t write an influential column in ArtNews, then by all means, you must be ignored.

If you’re working in Accounts Payable and you hate the company’s new logo, the people who created it should and must ignore your opinion. It just doesn’t matter to anyone but you.

Continue reading on Seth Godin’s site …

Apr
05

URLs and UX

By | Development, Focus

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Insert/Edit Link UI COncept

I despise broken links.

Most of the sites I read on a daily basis are littered with links to this site or that site.  Many of them are written quickly to get news stories out promptly and, as a result, are published with typos.

It’s one thing when I catch a typo in body content – most of us can read English words if the characters are in any order – but a typo in a link can be catastrophic.

The other day, for example, a friend posted a link to Twitter. Twitter immediately tried to parse the link to auto-shorten it … and broke the link in the process (apparently their tool doesn’t like quotes in URLs):

Similar mistakes make blogs and news posts difficult to follow.  A simple entry error can turn an otherwise useful link (i.e. http://google.com) into a broken one that results in a 404 Not Found error (i.e http://mindsharestrategy.com/htpt://google.com).

Not checking for broken links can lead to a poor user experience.  WordPress is all about creating a great user experience, so I think it should do a certain amount of checking for authors to protect us from our own proofreading laziness.

An Alternative

I’m a big fan of optimistic UI feedback.  Essentially, you assume that whatever action the user invoked is successful and only display messages when things fail or when unexpected behavior occurs.

Rather than prompting the user with a JavaScript alert every time a blog post is saved, you sound the sirens when something goes wrong.  The user expects the post to save, so you save it, give some subtle feedback (like the “post saved” message at the top of the screen) and move on.

Background processes should be even more subtle.

My suggestion is that the insert/edit link dialog check in the background to see if the entered URL is valid.

Technical Details

When the URL field loses focus, the UI submits the URL back to WordPress via AJAX.  WordPress then does a quick header check on the URL using the HTTP API.  All we really need is the response headers from the server to make sure it’s not a 404, any other response (200 OK or a 30X redirect) are fine.

If the link 404s, add some visual indication to the UI that the link might be bad.  If the link succeeds, and some indication that is passes.  For example, the two screenshots below show one way this feedback could be conveyed to the user:

Placing the mouse cursor over the indicator icon or the highlighted URL field would prompt the user to explain that the URL as typed returned an error and might be invalid.

This would in no way prevent the user from adding the link anyway. It’s merely intended to be a quick check to help prevent broken links from making their way into the field.

What are your thoughts? Do you see any value in this feature? Do you think your customers would see any value?

Mar
23

Happy Hunger Games

By | Family, In the Life

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I love a good story.

Drama. Action. Romantic comedy. Tragedy.  Fiction or non-fiction.  It doesn’t really matter.

We communicate through stories, and the best stories can connect perfect strangers in ways conversation or common ground never could.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the midnight release of The Hunger Games.  I’ve read the series, and I have been looking forward to the movie since I first saw the preview several weeks ago.

There were seven nearly-sold-out screens at the local theater.  I was surrounded by teenagers and adults alike.  The majority of us had read the books, and several people were even wearing t-shirts and costumes in honor of the film.

These were people I’d never met – some of whom I’ll never see again – yet we shared something last night. [Read more...]

Mar
23

Playing Nice With Others

By | Development, Focus

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Below is the video of my WordCamp Phoenix 2012 presentation.  Please, be nice :-)

Mar
19

Once Upon a Time

By | Development, Family, Focus, In the Life

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When I was 6, I wanted to be an architect.

I loved drawing, enjoyed visiting cool buildings, and had the odd drive to be a part of something bigger.  I checked books out from the library, talked up the idea with adults, and even took a crack at drawing up blueprints for the first house I’d build.

Needless to say, that didn’t quite work out.

As I grew up, my interests changed.  I tried my hand at CAD in middle school, but couldn’t figure out the complex interfaces.  Since everyone told me using a CAD system was essential for architecture, I gave up on that dream and grabbed hold of others.

My favorite high school teachers taught science, so I spent all of my time trying to figure out how the world worked.  Much to my parents’ dismay, I even brought experiments home from time to time 1.

Originally I wanted to work in the space program for NASA. I even applied for internships and chose a physics major in college for that purpose.  Eventually, I changed gears and wanted to teach.  Then I wanted to work in a lab.  Then I gave up on that entirely and went back to school for a second degree in political science.

I found I liked telling stories more than anything, so I studied marketing in business school and walked away with a masters degree in international management. [Read more...]

Notes:

  1. The first time I tried dividing water into hydrogen and oxygen in the living room resulted in several awkward parent-teacher meetings. ↩
Feb
29

What Goes Around …

By | Development, Focus, In the Life

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I’m not a formally-trained developer.  I might write software for a living now, but I got my start by copy-pasting code from Google searches into Microsoft Frontpage back in the day.

I know. Embarassing.

In grad school I finally took the time to research what other tools were available.  I discovered WordPress.  I was somewhat ecstatic.

Unfortunately, WP didn’t do everything I wanted it to do.  Certain features I needed were missing, others were buggy.  I somewhat despise traditional forums as a means of support, so I was grasping at straws for months trying to figure out how to make things work the way I wanted.

I started teaching myself PHP by hacking core files directly.  I didn’t understand actions and filters at the time, so this was the only way I knew how to make WordPress “behave.”  Those of you active in the community now know my opinion of people who hack core … :-)

I discovered Trac and the WP Hackers list and eventually got over my disdain for the forums.  My first year with WordPress was pretty active.  But just about none of my activity in the community was on the positive side. [Read more...]

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